


Apple of My Ocular (or, Humility)

by Rikudera



Series: Apple Pie [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Character Study, M/M, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Religious Imagery & Symbolism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-12
Updated: 2012-10-12
Packaged: 2017-11-16 03:28:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/534979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rikudera/pseuds/Rikudera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You understand that you are not a good person. You are a poisoned, rotten fruit. He has never stopped reaching out to you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Apple of My Ocular (or, Humility)

You understand that you are not a good person. There is no universe forgiving enough for a creature like you - not Alternia, not your young ancestors' planet, not the aliens', and not even the universe newly-born from the ashes of a green skull. You understand that your lack of desire to change this fact makes you a worse person. The humans view you as evil because you are a murderer, and the trolls view you as evil because you are a traitor. Your universe-destroying double-god was the only being who encouraged your actions, but as the Game has proven, godhood does not equal invulnerability. If both gods and the heroes that defeat them can be fallible, then you are a mere conduit for a greater villainy. You are the poisoned, rotten fruit, the weed that chokes and ruins the gardens so many saviors strove to create. You were hatched to be, both literally and figuratively, an instrument of destruction.

Your single redeeming feature is nothing within yourself. Karkat is all bluntness where you are jagged metal, from the tips of his nubby little horns to the bittersweet sensitivity he keeps hidden behind his numerous rants and snappish façade. You are far more unstable than any troll should have to struggle to control, and yet he has never hesitated. You have plotted and sabotaged against his goals without hesitation, and it only made him more determined. You have lied to him about crucial information, and he never chose to stop reaching out to you.

You have been millimeters away from removing a human’s head from his body with his own blade, and Karkat only marched up to you with a stern face, chiding and papping and cursing at you in soothing tones until you drifted back to reality and relaxed. He made you drop the sword - despite the fact that you'd been ordered by your god to destroy it -and even defended you when the human revealed the extent of your treachery. You repaid this by easily confirming every single accusation and watching Karkat's face slowly fall and crumple. When you absconded to continue serving your master, Karkat told you not to die.

You were one of the reasons your god nearly succeeded in devouring many universes, but you're also the reason he's dead. It's not because you changed your mind about destroying planets and stars with a vast honk. It's not because you felt remorse for manipulating as much as you could while wearing an unceasing grin, and it’s not because you decided that killing comrades was wrong. It's not even because you considered the very likely possibility of your own just death. All it took was a single, casual remark in which Karkat was included in a list of imminent dead for you to promptly begin pulling the woolbeast material over billiard-ball oculars and the woven floor accent from a gaudy peg leg. You have not told Karkat any of this. The official reason you tell yourself is that you don't want to hold it over his head; moirallegiance is not a competition, after all. The truth, on the other hand, is that you're afraid it'll make him realize how utterly morally bankrupt you are.

You have always been a terrible moirail, but at least you're trying now. Karkat is better at it, of course, but the fact that he still sticks with you and convinced everyone to let you live only proves how fortuitously perfect the whole thing is. When you told Karkat this - via the butchering of a favorite movie quote of his - he started chewing you out while cuddling you aggressively. He clung to you like a lamprey, swearing tenderly and wrinkling his nose when you had to check if he was crying or not.

Karkat thinks of romance as something one must be stalwartly dedicated to, so he does lots of things like that. The two of you can spend multiple hours on a pile of ugly Perigee's Eve sweaters, Karkat combing the knots out of your hair with his fingers, ranting about whatever silly thing your group did today, while you softly hum Troll Will Smith poems. If he still hasn't run out of things to say by then, you scoop him into your lap, slouch with your chin resting on his shoulder, and rock him back and forth gently. He buries his reddening face in your chest and tells you to eat more because you're too bony.

Karkat is there when you feel naked without the paint you abandoned, stroking your face with his fingertips and thanking you for how much realer you are now. He is there to bring the roaring, discordant screams of your pan down to a faint crackle of static, and he is there to let you skritch behind his ears and mumble nonsensically until you both stop frowning. You are wholly useless without him in a manner so exquisite that it must have been written into the very fabric of paradox space itself. You suspect, in both the best and worst way, that even knowing the rotten, heavy bruise at your core, he would still love you. You even suspect you want him to.


End file.
